The
Dance of Shadows in America:

Reflections
on the Presidential Election of 2016

“Always
the assumption is that we can first set demons at large and then,
somehow, become smart enough to control them.”Wendell Berry [1]

The
election is over. Many of us are confused, dismayed and live with the
questions of what actually happened? How can we make sense of it and
what can we do now?

We
live in strange times when both presidential candidates had
extraordinarily high negative ratings, each being loathed by close to
half the population. President Trump is described by many as having
some of the ugliest character traits one can imagine. ”A
hypersensitivity to criticism, a streak of viciousness, an inability
to confess error and a willful ignorance about the issues.”
[1]
One can easily add other unsavory qualities, that he is a proud and
unrepentant liar, a narcissist, an acknowledged tax evader, a racist,
misogynist, sexual predator and woeful bigot. Clearly singularly
unfit for office and yet now President of the United States.

With
Hillary Clinton the situation is more complex because she has been in
the public eye for decades, as first lady, as a Senator, presidential
candidate in 2008 and more recently as Secretary of State. Given her
experience and background it is hard to understand the demonization
and profound anger which the Republican Right has directed at her for
many years: she is the feminine face of evil, the devil incarnate,
the murderer who has dispatched dozens of individuals, an organizer
of the Clinton Foundation as a pay to play Ponzi scheme and,
listening to Donald Trump, the person most responsible for what is
wrong with America and the world.

There
is also another element which comes into play. She is described as
the symbol of the changes which our modern technocratic and more
socially inclusive society represents, giving minorities, women and
people of diverse sexual identities more rights and opportunities.
Hillary has thereby been made into a scapegoat by many white Trump
voters who blame her for a society in which they feel increasingly
disrespected, misunderstood, undervalued and unemployed.

There
have been many efforts to explain the popularity of Donald Trump and
his capture of the Republican Party and on Nov. 9th, of the
Presidency: he is the next logical step in the evolution of the
Republican party, he represents a backlash against having our first
black president; he is a charismatic sociopath, he has become the
voice of the dispossessed white underclass who are fast losing
control over their lives and who are suffering poverty, unemployment,
alcoholism as well as high levels of drug use. [3]

While
many of these statements have some truth they do not explain the
extreme vitriol of this election. Such intensity of feeling, of
mistrust and mutual denigration is only possible, I believe, because
the election, and its two main candidates, have triggered shadow
elements in the American psyche that reveal the many ways in which
our society and its institutions and leaders have failed to meet the
real needs and the hopes of many Americans.

The Shadow in
American Society

The
basic concept of the shadow is that light invariably creates shadow.
However we present ourselves to the world and may admire our better
natures, we also know we have issues we struggle with and which we
seek to hide, or deny, such as addictions, prejudices, a tendency
toward violence, lying, manipulating people and many unmet cravings
and secret fears.

Our
culture owes its awareness of the shadow in human nature largely to
the work of Carl Jung, and his impact on the field of modern
psychotherapy. In popular culture, redeeming the shadow is the
central drama in the story and Disney film, TheBeauty and the Beast,
(1991), in which Belle’s growing interest and love of the Beast
restores him to his rightful nature as a noble prince. Oscar Wilde’s
Picture of Dorian Grey
is another depiction of the shadow showing how he stays young and
beautiful while his portrait gets ever uglier as it becomes a record
of his crimes and debauchery. [4]

Jung
describes the shadow as “the
thing one has no wish to be”, and Jerimiah Abrams
adds,” we continue to know
it by many names: the alter ego, the lower self, the other, the
double, the dark twin, the disowned self…”
[5] In religious
traditions it is usually referred to as meeting our demons or working
with the devil.

Shadow
dimensions do not only exist in us as individuals but also in
institutions and nations; think pedophilia in the Catholic Church or
the recent cheating of elderly and Latino clients by Wells Fargo
Bank. If we look at the U.S. as a country, our shadow is visible in
the discrepancy between saying that we promote democracy when we
allow dark money to influence our elections or when we participate in
the overthrow of democratically elected governments, as in Iran,
Chile, Egypt and the Ukraine. It is the growing gap between who we
say we are as a people, a society and a nation, and how society
functions and how we often act, that creates our collective shadow.
The election has activated this contrast between our better natures
and our shadow, unleashing despair, anger, prejudice, fear, and a
longing for a simpler, kinder past.

Before
describing dimensions of the American Shadow that have been aroused
during the election I want to acknowledge that there is no shadow
without light, that “America
was once the hope of the world.” The
historian and philosopher, Jacob Needleman then added, “the
deeper hope of America was its vision of what humanity is and can
become---individually and in community. It was through that vision
that all the material and social promise of America took its fire and
light and its voice that called to men and woman within its own
borders and throughout the world. America was once a great idea and
it is such ideas that move the world, that open the possibility of
human meaning in human life.” [6]

This
idea and this promise were expressed in the three founding documents
of the new republic, the Declaration of Independence, the
Constitution and the Bill of Rights. In the preamble to the
Declaration of Independence we hear the famous words, “ We
hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,
that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable
rights, that among them are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of
Happiness.” [7]
These words contain a promise and a dream which the new country
attempted to realize and in so doing drew millions of people to its
shores, all hoping for a new opportunity, an escape from tyranny and
poverty and the freedom to practice one’s beliefs.

I
clearly remember arriving from Europe by boat as a young immigrant of
seven and seeing the Statue of Liberty outlined by the setting sun as
we steamed into New York harbor with the skyline of the city in the
distance. I was deeply touched without knowing why but feeling that
sense of arrival, of promise, of entering a new land and a new life,
a feeling shared by millions of people before and after me.

Of
course, from the beginning our founders did not see people without
property – slaves, women, native peoples, and later Asians,
Jews, or Latinos – as full human beings and much of our history
has been spent attempting to transform this mighty shadow built into
the very foundation of our nation.

A
second significant aspect of our collective shadow, of the American
double, is that our institutions and society no longer embody the
American dream. In economic life, unemployment and underemployment
have undermined the hopes of many Americans. Effective unemployment
is judged to be at around 11 percent and real poverty at 17 percent
of the population, since many Americans never recovered from the
financial crisis of 2008-10 and stopped looking for work. [8]

Central
to the Neoliberal Capitalist Canon, actively promoted by economic and
political elites since the time of Reagan, is the idea that life is
about material competition and so the best strategy is to look out
for number one. The corollary to this message is that if you are not
doing well it must be your fault as you lack the talent and energy to
succeed. Such “shaming” is reinforced by the media
through the constant marketing of the good life, of material
well-being, which few can afford, and the ongoing struggle for
survival shown in popular TV shows such as Survivor, The Bachelor,
Game of Thrones, House of Cards, and Donald Trump’s own
Apprentice. Selfishness, greed, and manipulation become the accepted
norms of our society and justify obscene salaries and growing income
inequalities. No wonder that Michael Lerner, in reviewing the
psychopathology of the election, notes that “the
triumph of selfishness as common sense creates a huge
psycho-spiritual crisis and a society filled with deeply scarred and
lonely people.“ [9]

The
fact that the economy does not work for many people, and that it
carries a shaming message for those who are struggling financially is
one part of the shadow of American Society. Another aspect of our
shadow is the breakdown of governmental institutions, and an
undermining of the United States Constitution by those sworn to
uphold it. Garrett Epps writes in The
Atlantic:“A
few weeks ago I wrote that the rise of Trump is a sign that the
Constitution is gravely, perhaps terminally ill. I underestimated how
far the rot has spread and how hard it will be to cure. A
constitution is not simply a collection of words, or even a set of
rules, it is a complex focus of text, history, values and
institutions. And as the nation forsakes the values, and devalues the
history, the institutions -for all their marble majesty-are hollowing
out. The Comey episode, (in which the FBI director interfered with
the election by releasing damning information on the Clinton e-mail
server issue just before the voting,) is but the latest symptom of a
seriously ailing civic culture.” [10]

The
role of hidden money in U.S. politics, made possible by the Citizens
United decision of the Supreme Court in 2010 is, to my mind,
one of the worst attacks on our democracy, being a cynical and
obvious effort to undermine the principle of one person, one vote.
Whatever legal arguments can be made, every citizen knows in their
heart that corporate money in politics is only spent to buy favors
and steer legislation to one’s advantage. Since mainly
corporations and their owners have large amounts of money, corporate
kleptocracy is officially sanctioned at the expense of the public
interest. The movement of Senators and Congressmen and women from the
House and the Senate into the lobbying firms on K Street further
underlines this evident corruption of our political institutions as
do declining corporate tax rates and decreases in effective taxation
on the rich.

The
Supreme Court and the institutions of the law are not exempt from
corruption either, given their history of racism and the meddling in
the Presidential election of 2000. Nor is the executive branch
immune, as the widespread use of mass surveillance of American
citizens and others has not been abandoned or even significantly
curtailed under Obama, while the illegal use of drones to kill both
U.S. citizens and foreigners continues unabated. There can be little
surprise then when the Pew Foundation found in 2014 that only 19
percent of voters trusted the government to do its job, and 74%
thought that elected officials put their own interests ahead of the
public’s. 11) No wonder Trump’s promise to drain the
swamp of Washington echoed so widely, even among loyal Democrats.

Cultural
life reveals similar weaknesses with the media being controlled by
corporate advertisers and largely owned by six families. Add to this
the mass surveillance of citizens by the National Security State and
the militarization of local police forces through the transfer of
surplus equipment from Iraq and Afghanistan and we have a lot to be
concerned about.

As
with government and the state, education in schools and universities
is also increasingly driven by a corporate agenda where teachers and
parents are excluded from policy decision-making and forced to work
with a mandated set of guidelines known as the Common Core. Colleges
also copy the forms, thinking, objectives and procedures of well-
known corporations.

We
seem to have drifted a long way from the American Dream, from the
promise and hope of freedom, equality and brotherhood/sisterhood, or
the hope of a diverse community of striving, developing and caring
human beings on a new continent full of natural blessings. In
recognizing this loss we are also asked to face the fact that our
very way of life, our striving for material abundance through the
creation of industrial and post -industrial societies, is severely
threatened. Climate change is perhaps the greatest shadow of our
times, a scourge which raises questions about the continuation of
life on the planet. As a critical issue for the future of humanity it
was not discussed once during the Presidential debates.

Hillary
Clinton and Donald Trump each strongly represent aspects of this
threefold shadow of American Society. Trump embodies the shallowness,
narcissism, egotism, materialism, misogyny and racism active in our
culture. His victory assures us that national politics will continue
to mirror the dynamics of reality show television as he brings his
show to the national stage, with the media echoing his every tweet.
For many, Hilary embodies what is wrong with our political system,
which serves the well connected and the wealthy while pursuing the
interests of Wall Street and the bi-coastal elite and not those of
people living in the heartland of America. And both, in different
ways, portray the self-serving, egotistical, and often corrupt nature
of our economic system.

Transforming Shadow
in Self and World

I
do believe that “a sense
for truth is the silent language of the soul,” that
we are all aware, albeit semiconsciously, of these shadow elements
not only in ourselves but also in our history and in our society.
[12] The election has
revealed this long developing economic, political, moral and
spiritual crisis in American life. The resulting anxiety, a deep
angst about our future, has led to aggression, pessimism, vitriol,
fear and shame at what we have become. Unfortunately, neither
candidate could address this longing for a new and moral articulation
of an American future, although I think Sanders tried, and so many
chose an immoral outsider, a personification of the worst aspects of
the American psyche out of fear and in the hope that he would change
the system, even if he might break it in the process. Decisions based
on anxiety and fear, in which our collective shadow promotes a person
who embodies the darker aspects of our nature, unfortunately seldom
have good outcomes.

Perhaps,
as one commentator noted, we need to add 11/09, (the election), to
9/11, as an important marker in our history. The call for “regime
change”, which the “War on Terror” led us to
promote in other countries, has now come home to haunt us fifteen
years later, in a strongly media manipulated election. First, there
is strong evidence that the Russian State attempted to influence the
election through hacking into the Democratic and possibly the
Republican Party servers and producing false news to discredit the
Clinton campaign. Secondly, as previously noted, the head of the
F.B.I., James Comey, made an unwarranted and, in all likelihood,
illegal, announcement eleven days before the election, re-opening the
investigation into Clinton’s e-mail servers.

Then
there is the dimension of the media’s increasing ability to
manipulate people’s voting directly. Roger Ailes, the long
-time President of Fox News and a friend and advisor of Donald Trump,
saw the potential of the media for manipulating feelings in politics
as early as 1968 and is reported to have remarked, “This
is a whole new concept. This is it. This is the way they will be
elected forevermore. The next guys will have to be performers.”[13] Fox News and
Facebook have proved his insight true, demonstrating the power of the
media to shape the thoughts, feelings and actions of large numbers of
anxious Americans. [14]

I
am stunned and find it deeply ironic that part of the American
electorate, being aware of and suffering most deeply from this
threefold shadow of American society and clearly seeing corporate
kleptocracy at work, would choose a President who represents the
worst aspects of these shadow elements. And Trump’s recent
appointment of so many military officers and corporate CEO’s to
his cabinet seems to cement the military industrial complex’s
take-over of American society.

So
what can we do? Yes, we must be watchful and support and join groups
that are concerned about the environment, about economic fairness and
jobs and above all about the state of democracy and human rights. We
can also meet with friends and develop a sense of what we want to
practice with others, such as a commitment to truth, increasing our
giving to causes that protect democracy (for example the ACLU), not
support leaders that engage in hate speech or promote simple
solutions, learn to be calm and thoughtful in times of threat, and
conduct open, nonthreatening conversations with people who supported
Trump. Each of us can develop a list of such practices and values and
discuss their application with others to promote a renewed sense of
civic-mindedness and democracy in our culture.

The
election also offers us a deeper opportunity and a warning: either we
pick up the challenge of self-development, of transforming our
personal shadow and learn to become more open, less prejudiced and
more caring, or we risk a further undermining of democracy in
ourselves and in society at large. As Gandhi said many years ago,
“The only devils in the
world … are those running around in our hearts. That is where
the battle should be fought.” [15]

This
battle can be fought if we channel at least some of the anxiety and
fear we feel about the election into self-reflection and inner work.
Creating moments of inner quiet is a start; and regardless of our
spiritual or religious orientation, developing gratitude and
expressing thanks to a divine order of the universe for the life we
have been given, even with its difficulties, is an important next
step. The journey then requires that we pay close attention to the
ways in which our life and our partners' and colleagues' reveal our
own shadow to us. This help is often unpleasant since our partners,
colleagues, and children have the unique capacity to push our buttons
and in so doing to pierce through our self-assurance, our authority
or our defenses. Indeed, life itself is the great school,
continuously asking us and at times demanding that we acquire
self-knowledge. Reflecting on our experience in life, seeing that
which is being asked of us and that which we need to transform, is
also essential for our sanity. This is what allows us to take more
responsibility for our lives, thereby avoiding the externalizing of
our pain through blaming others in a ritual of victimhood.

Working
with the shadow asks us to explore what it is in us that we seek to
deny, or hide. This is also true in our families and places of work.
What are the things which cannot be talked about, that are excluded
from conversation automatically, and which, if mentioned, lead to
anger, aggression and blaming? I remember a family conversation many
years ago between my brothers, sister and myself as well as our
partners about the role that my grandfather, a retired naval officer,
played during the Nazi time in Germany as the governor of a small
rural county. Clearly he must have cooperated with the Gestapo. Very
quickly the conversation degenerated, ending in shouting and tears.
We were not yet ready to face this aspect of our family history, just
as we as a country seem not yet ready to face the racism of our legal
system or many of the other shadow dimensions of our society.

Facing
shadow elements in ourselves and in our relationships, and bringing
some awareness to the fact that we are each capable of behavior which
we deplore in the world at large, releases energy and gives us an
experience of meaning and of more personal freedom. We can then begin
to have a small sense of that experience which the English poet and
playwright Christopher Frye expressed in a drama called “The
Sleep of Prisoners”. “Thank
God our time is now when wrong comes up to face us everywhere…Affairs
are now soul size… [16]

In
doing such inner reflection we deepen the capacity for moral
discernment and I would say truer political and social judgment.
Having some awareness of our personal shadow allows us to begin
acknowledging the collective shadow of American Society, of the
erosion to our freedom, the challenges to equality and democracy, and
the gross inequities of our economic system.

As
we work on ourselves and begin transforming our shadow, we can also
begin practicing the principles of a more wholesome society with
others. When listening deeply to an adolescent child in trouble or
paying careful attention to a colleague with whom we disagree , we
are acting as a guardian of the other’s freedom. When we let
this listening deepen, we invariably come to experience the other’s
essential humanity and will want to safe-guard their rights rather
than undermining them or wishing to marginalize them. Seeing and
understanding the other in a conversation, in a family or in groups
and institutions awakens a genuine desire to help, to serve the
other in word and deed. This becomes the basis for a sharing economy,
an economy that seeks to enhance life rather than exploit other human
beings and the earth.

As
we begin to practice the principles of a new society in our own life,
we can bring to consciousness three deep longings which I think live
in all human beings: the longing for inner and outer freedom, the
longing for the mutual recognition of the equality of all human
beings, and the longing for meaningful work and the wish to serve
others. These yearnings, while in us, are often covered over by our
egotism, our fear and our prejudice. A willingness to reflect, to
wake up, and to work on oneself will uncover them as a force for joy
as we work toward being more caring and loving human beings. In this
way we are also working with the second great commandment of the
Bible, “Love thy neighbor
as Thyself.” [17]

I
have described two basic steps, using the election as a spur to
working on our double, and then taking a second step of practicing
the principles of a healthy society in our relationship with others,
with our partners, in our families, with friends and colleagues and
at work. [18] The third
step is supporting and joining the many thousands of groups who are
wanting to protect what has been achieved against the likely ravages
of a Trump Administration and are also busy creating a new, freer,
more democratic and sustainable society in the United States and
around the world. This largely hidden, new society is visible in many
towns and regions of the United States and abroad and is movingly
described by Paul Hawken in Blessed
Unrest as a global movement of civil society seeking to
undo the unholy alliance between big business and big government.
[19] Some of its
manifestations are sustainable food networks and CSA’s
(Community Supported Agriculture), direct democracy initiatives,
citizen councils and sociocracy efforts, cooperatives and employee
owned businesses, socially and environmentally responsible local
investment networks, corporate charter groups and groups working on
getting money out of politics. One can add many local, regional and
national groups committed to social justice, to environmental reform,
to neighborhood education, and thousands of groups focused on
physical, psychological and spiritual health.

The
three steps, which are not sequential but must be practiced together,
are summarized in this simple chart:

I
think the election of Trump represents an effort by an older world
order, based on egotism, nationalism, materialism and exploitation to
reassert itself. It can be the spur to our practicing a more open
heart toward others and the world, toward transforming the shadow of
empty materialism and the wanton search for power to a resurrection
of the American Dream. America could again become a beacon for the
world, but only if we combine deep inner work with the disciplined
desire to create a caring, sustainable society and if we remember and
make real that “America is
the fact, the symbol and the promise of a new beginning”.
[20]

Christopher
Schaefer Ph.D. is a retired adult educator and community
development advisor living in the Berkshires. He is the co-director
of the Center for Social Research at the Hawthorne Valley
Association, and the co-author of Vision
in Action: Working with Soul and Spirit in Small Organizations,
and the author of Partnerships
of Hope: Building Waldorf School Communities .

These
two books give a detailed and caring account of the plight of
working class people from Appalachia. Joe Bageant, Deer Hunting
with Jesus : Dispatches from America’s Class War, Barnes
and Noble, NY.,N.Y. 2000 and the more recent

J.D.
Vance, Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and a Culture in
Crisis, Harper Collins, N.Y, N.Y.

2016.

The
Beauty and the Beast was a fairy tale written by Jeanne-Marie Le
Prince de Beaumont, and made into an animated film by Disney in
1991. The Picture of Dorian Gray, was a controversial novel
published by Oscar Wilde in London in 1891, ( Ward, Lock and Co.)

J.
Needleman, The American Soul: Rediscovering the Wisdom of the
Founders, Jeremy Tarcher/Putnam, N.Y.,N.Y. p.3. A deeply
philosophical and moving reflection on our history and society.,

Declaration
of Independence , passed by the Continental Congress on July
4th, 1776.

The
effective poverty rate was judged to be 17.9 percent in 2012, and
has dropped somewhat since then. See wwwdemos.org/blog/10/20/15. The
unemployment rate, counting those who are underemployed and have
stopped looking for work is presently around 11 percent. See CNBC,
Nicholas Wells, June 3,2016.

Michael
Lerner,” Psychopathology in the 2016 Election” in
Tikkun, Autumn 2016. A very insightful analysis by the
founder of the Network of Spiritual Progressives.

Garrett
Epps, “Trumpism is the Symptom of a Gravely Ill Constitution”
The
Atlantic, September 20,2016

Pew
Research Center, Research Report, Beyond Distrust: How Americans
View the Government, 2014.

In
a report from 3D Research by K. Sokoloff it is suggested that the
Trump campaign developed a highly sophisticate Facebook program to
target individual Trump supporters in key battleground states and
that this effort was much more effective than TV advertising. 3D
Research Report .”What I learned this Week, Nov.
24th,2016.

Quoted
in Abrams, (Ed.), The Shadow in America, op.cit., p 41

Poem
contained in play by Christopher Frye, A Sleep of Prisoners,
Oxford University Press, 1951, NY.NY

Mathew,
22.36-40, Bible, King James Version.

P.
Hawken, Blessed Unrest : How the Largest Movement in the World
Came into Being and Why No One Saw It Coming, Viking,
N.Y. 2007

See
Otto Scharmer, “ On the Making of Trump, The Blind Spot That
Created Him”, Huffington Post, Nov. 11, 2016 for an
insightful perspective on the election in which he refers to the
shadow elements I have described as blind spots as well as giving a
picture of a new society.